GinRummy wrote on Mar 17, 2019, 12:33:Consent? How does one give (or not give) consent in Epic launcher? I saw nothing about it, unless it's buried somewhere in a EULA that nobody reads. Maybe they'll import some games from Steam into Epic, kinda like GOG did, except that most people want it going the other direction.

If they're doing anything with user data, they should explicitly state to users that they're doing so. Uploading the friends list to Epic from Steam requires the user to permission it, which it in itself is fine.

If they're taking the localconfig.vdf regardless (which contains the friends list and the app license list) then the permission process is a sham, which is illegal in the EU under GDPR.

I asked the Bethesda EU PR Manager whether he can look into getting Future Shock and Skynet (and possibly the earlier releases) up on GOG or whether they're tied up in licensing hell. He said he'd look into it with Todd Howard.

Fantaz wrote on Jun 25, 2015, 08:51:are they literally taking retail box copies off the shelves?

Eurogamer says 'yes'.

UPDATE 25TH JUNE 11.30AM: GAME employees have confirmed to Eurogamer that the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight is now being pulled from shop shelves.

We enquired whether we could still buy a copy of the game even in full knowledge that the game had bugs, and was told that the chain had last night been ordered by publisher Warner Bros. to immediately stop selling PC copies.

"We have the stock," one GAME employee said, "but I'm not allowed to sell it to you".

They already do this with the LEGO Minifigures Online MMO - you get a code with the physical figures that unlocks it in the game without having to collect the parts.

This just seems like a logical extension, but given how some of the fun with LEGO is mashing up the figures into new characters, I don't see how they'd be able to track the parts using a NFC 'portal' - they're just too small. Using a camera to 'view' the figures would just be too expensive.

Bootcamp is *not* the solution to Mac gaming - Bootcamp is sidestepping the problem entirely for convenience and/or laziness. Mac gaming is the solution to Mac gaming.

Developers need to break out of the confines of writing exclusively for Microsoft's APIs and embrace proper cross platform programming. Heck, they're already doing it when writing console games for the PS3 (which uses variants of OpenGL/AL).

Heck, the aforementioned Blizzard work exclusively in OpenGL because it allows easy cross-platform production, whilst iD Software work exclusively in OpenGL because of the greater freedom it offers in building their mental engines. UE3 also supports OpenGL natively. Then you have cross-platform engines & languages like Unity & WebGL which basically make the whole notion of a 'platform' irrelevant.

The only reason that no effort is given to anything but porting the games these days is laziness and/or budgetary limitations, but then again, if you looked in the Mac App Store, there are hundreds of previously DirectX games that have been converted because it's suddenly become viable.

Also, Bootcamp is *not* free, as you need to buy the associated Windows license to use it.

Beamer wrote on Feb 2, 2012, 13:53:Seems like the most sensible way to go. After that 6 month initial window just patch it. Maybe a year, if they want to be conservative. Games don't tend to have that long of a tail.

To be honest, that's sorta what they did with AC2 & Splinter Cell: Conviction.

After an amount of time (and/or sales) they removed the 'always on' aspect. It's not a disc-check or one-time activation (it still phones home once per session) but it isn't a persistent check.

I guess there's no chance of them ever reducing it to a one-off check because someone would compare the two executables and be given a free pass to 100% ripping out UPlay.

InBlack wrote on Nov 22, 2011, 06:45:Or...they could create a launcher (or even the first-run setup thingy) that detects how much pyhsical ram your machine has and set the appropriate modifier (or exe).

Indeed, but such things have to go through QA and other checks before being released into the wild.It's also something that they may not want to *officially* put their name too, as the LAA modifier takes the program 'out of spec' for an x86 program, something which can cause them many more support headaches should something fall over as a result.

Once again, think outside of the mind of a gamer who understands things like this and consider the whole fanbase that Bethesda has to consider.

Given most of the stuff you see in games is probably either just tweaks to off-the-shelf shaders or stuff borrowed from the Morrowind/Oblivion beautification mods, I'd go as far as saying that's not rocket science either.

InBlack wrote on Nov 22, 2011, 04:39:You cant be serious?? How the fuck is this even possible????? Oh brother....Well this is the last time Im buying a Gamebyro, no, no excuse me CREATION ENGINE game from Bethesda. Dont get me wrong, graphics arent the be all end all of my game experience, but this engine is OOOOOLLLLLD and it fucking shows, fancy, shmancy graphics or no its a clunky piece of shit that clearly cripples the otherwise open-ended nature of this game.

See my recent point - It isn't Bethesda 'enforcing' this, it's more their inaction in breaking out of the default limit...

They could quite happily create the EXE with the LAA modifier enabled by default, but then the game would likely crash on every machine with less than 4GB RAM.

Forethought would say 'create 2 executables - either an x86 & x64 version OR an x86 & x86 w. LAA' but then that's ignoring the fact I'm a person behind a keyboard, not a relatively inflexible monolithic company with a remit to support >7 million users, each with varying .

Jerykk wrote on Nov 22, 2011, 04:17:No. The game itself won't use more than 2 gigs even if you have a 64-bit OS. All of Bethesda's RPGs have had this limitation since Oblivion.

It's a legacy limitation of x86 - Unless you specifically force it to address more memory with the LAA modifier, Windows will not allow a 32-bit process out of a 2GB 'sandbox' so as to ensure the program doesn't hit the 4GB address limit of a 32-bit OS.

Ofc, x86 code has no way of knowing if you're running a 64-bit OS because of the WOW64 wrapper Microsoft use to get x86 working in x64, which could, granted, inject the LAA command into any exe, but heaven forbid Microsoft think outside the box...

64-bit programs have the same limitation, although that limit could be anywhere between 16GB & several TB, depending on the OS you're running.